New Hard Drives!

[zeva]

Hello, I am looking two new hard drives, possible three, one for boot and one or two for storage this was posted on FW so if it looks familiar!
Currently i have a
Asus P5Q pro
EVGA 8800GT
Intel E7200
Creative pro Elite X-fi
250GB PATA
320 SATA
160 SATA
60 PATA
1tb WD green external

i have 4 SATA ports left on my Mother board
i am looking for a semi fast boot drive, and a second in mirroring raid for storage of my photos... but after doing some reading i think raid is a bad idea due to the dependency on the chip set
my budget is about 100 each i am planning on buying the boot drive first


these are the benchmarks for my Drives
250gb PATA

Transfer Rate Minimum : 30.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 61.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 51.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.8 ms
Burst Rate : 70.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 6.7%


60GB PATA
Transfer Rate Minimum : 21.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 40.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 34.2 MB/sec
Access Time : 11.8 ms
Burst Rate : 76.5 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 4.7%


160gb
Transfer Rate Minimum : 25.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 79.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 61.0 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.8 ms
Burst Rate : 147.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.1%


320Gb
Transfer Rate Minimum : 40.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 79.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 65.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.6 ms
Burst Rate : 104.6 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 15.2%
Thank so much for the help!!

[tim]

Just get a SATA Seagate Barracuda. Bigger disks have higher data density and are therefore faster. I also store my music and movies on the boot disk, that way when I listen to music while i'm working the disk isn't trying to stream music and process images at the same time. Though I have four disks in my machine now - boot/music, personal data, commercial photos, and photoshop scratch.

[zeva]

any barracudas to be specific?

[zeva]

also would you suggest i offload the 60gb pata to another computer and perhaps the 160 also? and maybe make the 250 an external thanks again!

[danpass]

I have a seagate 7200rpm 500GB.

Even so I would go with the fast Western Digitals. 1tb is nice.

Boot drive (I use an 80gb WD, 7200rpm)
Internal storage drive
External drive (copying the internal storage drive). I use windows Synctoy for the copying.

Having the SATA port to the external drive is nice. Even so I have the sync set to run at4am or so.

[zeva]

Which WD 1 TB? i presume blacks?

[tim]

Any Seagate barracuda, they're much the same. I've used seagate for ten years and i've not had a failure yet. All drives fail eventually. WD are good too, no idea about their models though.

A 60GB PATA drive is probably quite old and slow, i'd probably ditch it. My boot drive is a 120GB Seagate that's about 5 years old, i'll probably replace it with a 500GB-1TB SATA drive in the next year or so.

[zeva]

Hmm what aobut the 7200.11/.10/.12? what does all those mean? i presume .12 is the best due to it being the newst?

[PixelMagic]

Stay away from the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives. If you check online retailers you'd notice they are relatively inexpensive and its for a reason. Earlier this year Seagate release the 7200.11 drives and they had faulty firmware which caused a large percentage of drives to fail. Seagate then released a firmware fix that made the problem even worse. So now it appears that instead of withdrawing the 7200.11 drives from the retail channels Seagate is discounting them heavily to sell them off.

See this link: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/530/1050530/seagate-bungles-firmware-update

The 7200 is the drive model number and refers to the revolutions per minute. The numbers after the point refers to the release versions of the drive; .12 is the latest version.

[zeva]

Oh so avoid .11 at all cost and i assume .10 will be slower than .12?

[jcw122]

The newest models made by Seagate or Western Digital are recommendable.

With regards to sizes, the boot should be smallest, and the storage ones can be very large. From just this information, you should be able to find something very easily.

If you'd like to splurge a bit on performance, grab a Western Digital Raptor (10k RPM instead of 7.2k) for the boot drive. Although that is a luxury item, it also looks like you didn't really skimp on your system either.

[zeva]

haha my comptuer the most expensive part was the sound card! i cheaped out on my HDs trying to fix that now! i was looking at raptors but those are a bit steep i m planning on upgrading to an I7 perhaps at the end of the year... so i cant decide!

[zeva]

Also does anyone know the diffrences between blue and black WD drives?

[Tony-S]

Stay away from the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives. If you check online retailers you'd notice they are relatively inexpensive and its for a reason. Earlier this year Seagate release the 7200.11 drives and they had faulty firmware which caused a large percentage of drives to fail. Seagate then released a firmware fix that made the problem even worse. So now it appears that instead of withdrawing the 7200.11 drives from the retail channels Seagate is discounting them heavily to sell them off.

Those drives are pretty much off the market now. I have three 1.5 TB 7200.11 drives and they are perfectly fine. The firmware issue is no issue at all now, provided you buy from a reputable dealer.

[Tony-S]

Also does anyone know the diffrences between blue and black WD drives?

As far as I'm concerned, all WD drives will leave you black and blue...

Seagates and Samsungs only for me.

[zeva]

As far as I'm concerned, all WD drives will leave you black and blue...

Seagates and Samsungs only for me.
hahaha very nice! ya the samsung and Seagate .12 seem to outpeform the WD Black

[tim]

Hmm what aobut the 7200.11/.10/.12? what does all those mean? i presume .12 is the best due to it being the newst?

It's just slightly never versions. Avoid the .11 for reasons people have said, but I have .11 drives and they work perfectly. I might update the firmware, but I have backups so i'm not worried about it.

Stay away from the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives. If you check online retailers you'd notice they are relatively inexpensive and its for a reason. Earlier this year Seagate release the 7200.11 drives and they had faulty firmware which caused a large percentage of drives to fail. Seagate then released a firmware fix that made the problem even worse. So now it appears that instead of withdrawing the 7200.11 drives from the retail channels Seagate is discounting them heavily to sell them off.

See this link: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/530/1050530/seagate-bungles-firmware-update

The 7200 is the drive model number and refers to the revolutions per minute. The numbers after the point refers to the release versions of the drive; .12 is the latest version.

I think it's a small percentage of those drives that had a problem, for example mine didn't.

The newest models made by Seagate or Western Digital are recommendable.

With regards to sizes, the boot should be smallest, and the storage ones can be very large. From just this information, you should be able to find something very easily.

If you'd like to splurge a bit on performance, grab a Western Digital Raptor (10k RPM instead of 7.2k) for the boot drive. Although that is a luxury item, it also looks like you didn't really skimp on your system either.

Why do you want a small boot drive? A small drive can be slower than a large drive, and are only very slightly cheaper. Once your OS and applications have opened the drive is pretty rarely used, so you can use it for media or swap files.

haha my comptuer the most expensive part was the sound card! i cheaped out on my HDs trying to fix that now! i was looking at raptors but those are a bit steep i m planning on upgrading to an I7 perhaps at the end of the year... so i cant decide!

Very few people buy sound cards any more. Raptors are unnecessary. Going to i7 you have to get new cpu, motherboard, and ram, so if you're thinking of doing that I don't see any reason to upgrade now - you'd be throwing those same three components away.

[zeva]

Noo I have my computer already... ive been using it for a little more than a year and all the stuff i listed i have ya i agree with raptors though theyre just too expensive

[tim]

Ok, well this is turning into a huge thread for such a simple question. Just go buy a Seagate or WD hard drive, SATA, whatever size you need. Other than the Seagate .11 drives any WD or Seagate drive will be fine. Like I said I like Seagate.

[Zepher]

WD Black 640 as a boot.
WD 1TB Black as storage (I have one of these as my boot drive partitioned as a 200gig boot and 800gig storage.)
I get 160MB/sec transfer between my 2 WD 1TB Blacks and my Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda

I also have the same mobo you have P5Q Pro with all the SATA ports used.
http://www.transamws6.com/pics/pc/2009/drives-vista2.jpg

[jcw122]

Seva, what kind of power supply do you have? I'm just curious.

[tim]

Hard drives only take about 30W at startup, 10W when working, 2W when idle.

[danpass]

WD Black 640 as a boot.
WD 1TB Black as storage (I have one of these as my boot drive partitioned as a 200gig boot and 800gig storage.)
I get 160MB/sec transfer between my 2 WD 1TB Blacks and my Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda

I also have the same mobo you have P5Q Pro with all the SATA ports used.

http://www.transamws6.com/pics/pc/2009/drives-vista2.jpg


Haha. The Turk :D




.

[CyberDyneSystems]

That's a lot of hard drives!

[Titus213]

That's a lot of FULL HDs.

[Zepher]

That's a lot of FULL HDs.

Most of it is just stuff, but I do have my photos copied to 4 of the drives, since I had so much space.
When I ran low on space, I'd add a drive, and then add a drive, and so on.

[tim]

I have 4-5 120-200GB hard drives lying around useless. No point using drives that small any more. Any drives I buy now are at least 1TB. I have about 2.4TB internally and 2.0GB external offsite!

[danpass]

I have 4-5 120-200GB hard drives lying around useless. No point using drives that small any more. Any drives I buy now are at least 1TB. I have about 2.4TB internally and 2.0GB external offsite!

Ha. Only 2GB offsite.












































j/k ;) It's obivous you meant 2TB

.

[tim]

Ya oops.

[joeseph]

I have 4-5 120-200GB hard drives lying around useless. No point using drives that small any more. Any drives I buy now are at least 1TB. I have about 2.4TB internally and 2.0GB external offsite!
you don't have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200G SATA do you? I have a friend that has had one fail & needs one to try a disc platter swap...

[tim]

Nope, all Seagate Barracuda.

[joeseph]

Nope, all Seagate Barracuda.
:p worth a try...

[Faolan]

I'd avoid Seagate due to their faux pas with some of their drives...

That aside, what's your PSU? I've noticed that anything less than 500w struggles with 5 drives, add more and you'll need 550/650w PSU.

AS to recommending drives, to save power WD Green Power line(EADS is the latest gen) or Black. They've also brought out a enterprise class drive as well.

I run 4 x 1TB WD Greenpower drives for data storage.

[tim]

Only a small number of seagate drives were affected, mine were all fine and I bought in that time period. Also hard drives take only 10W each so that 500W PS needed comment is not really accurate.

[Faolan]

I have 4 Greenpower drives, each taking around 5-7w and one Raptor drive. I do know the system flakes out/fails to boot when you have 5 or more drives in it. Also each USB device needs power so this needs to be factored in. Finally you never run a PSU near it's capacity. You always buy the next size up, this makes it more efficient and reliable.

Remember when choosing the PSU you've got to consider capacitor wear on it plus boot time stress. Unless you have a controller card that has a staggered start then all your drives are going to ramp up at full power plus all your components. Some HDs need 30w (or more with some SAS drives) of power on starting per drive.

Seagate, yes it was a small amount of drives but I still wouldn't trust a company that screwed up a firmware update that bricked drives. Sure they offered recovery to those affected but that's not any use when you need a drive up and running. I have never had much luck with Seagate over the years from their consumer to their SCSI drives.

[Marius B]

I've just started to plan a new computer setup, and when it comes to HD:

1x SSD 60GB Boot
1x 1TB for storage
1x 1 TB mirror

All internal drives. Any thoughts on this setup?

[tim]

I've read many threads on SSDs on another forum. A SSD boot disk will mean windows boots quickly, and programs launch quickly. With images on the SSD processing will be much faster. Which would you rather was fast? You can move your active files onto the SSD then work on them. Or keep the OS and active working files on it, and use the spinning disk as archive.

[Marius B]

Ok, so for the fastest image processing the images should also be on the SSD... hmm what about the so called scratch disc for photoshop, has this anything to do with it?

I mean if I setup the scratchdisc to be also on the SSD, this should make the image processing faster without moving the files? Isn't this why there are something called scratchdisc?

[tim]

You'd have to experiment to work it out. SSDs are still getting better and cheaper really fast, if you don't have definite need i'd probably wait them out a bit longer. 60GB is really too small for much except a boot disk and swap/scratch. It's generally cheaper to get more memory and a 64bit OS than putting scratch on a solid state disk AFAIK.

[Faolan]

Anandtech has the best overview of SSDs and the technology:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1

In many ways SSDs are a black art to leverage the best out of them. Currently NTFS isn't set up to take advantage of the way SSDs work, Windows 7 will bring some improvements in this area.

Most controllers will endeavour to hide this from the OS, which can lead to other problems. So unless you need the fastest drives on the planet I would invest in a normal spindle drive. Unless you work in a environment that counts seconds (such as video editing).

Note that the requirements for Windows 7 is now confirmed to be 20Gb, when you add in all your applications and so on a SSD won't often give much leeway to breath.

Review your workflow and consider if speed would be beneficial to the way you work, then factor in the costs. Personally my next rig is going to be a SAS/SATA system.